April 25, 2016

Stream: Mariah Welch - SLIPPER

Listen to Mariah Welch's first full-length album SLIPPER.

The first time I was introduced to Mariah Welch was 3 years ago when her band Meghan's TV released their debut Kim's Room. The four song EP is the kind of thing you listen to incessantly after you discover it. Ridden with hints of nostalgia and 90s grunge-punk vibes, each song on the album is like crawling into a time capsule and transporting to an episode of My So-Called Life. The band has since been inactive but Mariah, the band's vocalist now based in Oakland, CA, has continued to release solo material over the last few years.

SLIPPER comes to us today as Mariah's first full-length body of work that spans several years. You'll find that her personal work is much more introspective and complex in nature, her own brand of cryptic bedroom pop that lends itself to days spent beneath the sheets, messy hair, and dimly lit rooms. Moody in all the right ways, SLIPPER is an ultra-vulnerable piece that weaves in distorted voices and sound samples to illuminate the past, present, and future, and all the things that can so easily get lost in translation throughout time. Like a distant dream, Mariah echoes gentle whispers beneath a cloud of reverb and tender guitar chords. In a universe that is sometimes so loud and chaotic, she uses this album as an opportunity to self-examine and focus on the quiet, smaller details of our day to day lives. Read Mariah's take on the album and stream it below.

Mariah Welch on her new album SLIPPER:

"SLIPPER was written over the course of a four-year time span in the heart of Kensington, Philadelphia. Each song deals with the subject matter of finding your inner-self in a world that is virtual, filled with propaganda, and overwhelmingly sped up but also one that is warm, welcoming, and full of unexpected love sources. Peace and disorder mix together in a wave of nostalgia to create music that seems to slip off the tongue like honey. The songs themselves are spliced with field recordings collected over the same time span and range from the forgotten but familiar voices of past lovers, talking head leaders making absurd speeches, simple synth noises, and conversations of friends that make time dissipate and allow time travel to become more of a reality. SLIPPER was recorded in one take in a small bedroom while motorcycles revved their engines and disco music blasted out of a nearby window. If you listen hard enough, you can make out the sounds of the city swirling about in the thick Philly air. Truthful. Simple. Loving."